Abstract:
This conceptual article is anchored on critical phenomenology to
challenge the monopolisation of visual arts by the sense of vision,
thus depriving visually impaired people of aesthetic value beyond
ordinary cognitive faculties. In this study, we discuss the forms of
painting, drawing and sculpting defined as Visual Arts referring to
appreciation only by vision; thus, excluding the visually impaired
as unable to appreciate or create by sight. This exclusiveness
has dominated and directed art aesthetics and ethics, allowing
aesthetic criteria research projects and educational curricula to
be established and, conventionally, maintain their static existence
unchallenged. Furthermore, vision exclusiveness limits creative
thinking and artistic inspiration. This article demonstrates the need
and importance of broadening students’ artistic conceptualisation of
inclusiveness in Visual Arts by exploring three fields of humanities
education, i.e., academic, educational and sociocultural. The article
challenges established stereotypes by introducing innovative
approaches and opening alternative channels of creative and critical
thinking in higher art education. From a sociocultural viewpoint in
the South African context, the analysis questions the validity of
certain firmly rooted stereotypical concepts about art values and
standards by encountering the visually unimpeded and impaired.
While the research broadens students’ artistic conceptualisation of inclusiveness in Visual Arts, it simultaneously promotes the concept
of hephapreneurship (hepha+preneurship), a neologism inspired
by the Greek god, Hephaestus, protector of arts and crafts, himself
handicapped. The term does not draw attention to the inabilities of
persons with visual impairment, but their creative abilities through
encouragement and motivation. By direct and open exposure to the
problem, the research promotes the importance of arts education
as a challenging platform for interaction between two, by definition,
opposed realities.
